Host:And we’re back withLife and Death on an Island, where all politics is local but death is universal. In this episode we’re speaking with four members of Block Island’s town council. I’d like to dig into the hotel plan Evan brought up before we had a word from our sponsors. Evan, can you fill the listeners in on exactly what’s involved in a proposal like the one Buchanan Enterprises brought before you last summer?
Evan:Okay, sure. Technically, it wasn’t brought before us first, but it did end up in front of us eventually. To tear down an existing structure like the motel Buchanan had bought, the owner would first put a proposal before the Historic Commission. If Historic denied some part of the project, for whatever reason, and the owner wanted to fight it, the appeal would go to Zoning. If Zoning denied, they could kick to us for a reversal. That’s what happened.
Lou(whistles): Historic can be tough, but Zoning can be tougher.
Betsy:You can say that again. My ex-brother-in-law is on Zoning.
Kelsey:Remember when they first proposed the bathrooms at Mansion Beach? That was somedrama.
Lou:That’s how it should be. You don’t want to let people build willy-nilly all over the island. There’s only so much land.
Kelsey: Taylor Buchanan must have felt like the whole town was against her when she was trying to get that proposal through. Did you read that opinion piece in the paper?
Host:Can you elaborate on that?
Lou:Yeah, sure. I’ll take that. Somebody wrote an opinion piece against the hotel proposal, unsigned. The piece itself was okay, fair enough, I’d say, but online, in the comments section? Sheesh. They got rough. They got personal about the Buchanans. You’d have to be pretty thick-skinned to let that roll over you.
Betsy:I can’t imagine what would have happened if we ever got to the public hearing. I don’t think people would have held back. Henry, though? My grandson? Like I said earlier in the episode he was GC on the four homes Buchanan had under construction. He spokeveryhighly of Taylor Buchanan.
Kelsey:But we never got to the public hearing. They pulled the proposal.
Evan:Because of the death.
Lou:Well, come on now. Those two things aren’t necessarily related.
Kelsey:It’s all related. Trust me. Everything’s related.
Juliana
July is more than half over already, the date of the IPO approaching faster and faster. Not quite three months to go. There are days when Juliana is busy all the time, from dawn to dusk, and Allison basically runs the rest of her life while she works. Then there are days when she has only one meeting in the morning and nothing in the afternoon. There are days when she needs to put out three or four fires, and other days when not so much as an ember burns. There is a two-day period where she has to fly to New York to meet with research analysts. It surprises her, when she comes back, how much returning to the island feels like coming home. Is sheacclimatingto the Block? Does she, a woman so long without a country, finally have an island?
The week after she returns, a journalist fromBloomberg Businessweekis coming to the island to do a piece on Juliana. Her name is Caitlin O’Donnell, and she’s written profiles on Sara Blakely of Spanx; on the duo who founded Away suitcases; on Tory Burch; on the founder of a hands-free breast pump.
This isn’t the first journalist who has done a piece on Juliana, and in fact not by a long shot is it the biggest publication that’s covered LookBook, but she’s atypically unnerved by the whole thing. The closer she gets to the IPO, the more important it is that everythinggo well, that all the press be positive, that everything she does casts the company in the very, very best light. She needs the level of excitement about the company to be at its very highest right before the valuation is complete. The most delicate days are ahead of her, and she must tiptoe through them like a maiden through the dew.
No, not like a maiden through the dew. Come on, Juliana. She must be much more forceful than a tiptoeing maiden. She must be like—oh, never mind. The metaphor isn’t important. The end result is.
Juliana debates over whether to take the journalist to Joy Bombs, the coffee shop where she and Shelly went that day they saw each other on Clayhead Trail. Appropriate, or is it too cute, too folksy?
(Later, when people pick over the events of the summer, they might come to think of the Clayhead meetup as “that fateful day.”)
“Meet her at the Joy Bombs,” Allison tells her, full of confidence. “And then bring her back here. You don’t want your photographs done at a coffee shop. You probably want them by the water.”
“I forgot all about photographs!” Juliana recalculates. Will she be able to show anyone around her house without her eyes darting across the pond to where, when it’s dark, she can always see the green light at the end of the dock? Will she be able to (will she even need to?) justify her choice of location for a summer home?
“Wear your white jeans with the frayed hem,” instructs Allison. “The Moussy Vintage ones? And your silk tank top in baby blue. The blue is going to pick up the undertones of your skin.”
“Blazer?” asks Juliana.
Allison considers this question. She lets out a little puff of air, and she clicks her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “Yes,” she says finally. “Also white, but one shade off from the jeans.”
Allison is Juliana’s own personal LookBook. “Got it.”
When the IPO goes through, thinks Juliana, Allison is getting a bonus so big it will make her eyes pop. Shelly might get a bonus too! Despite what Juliana is beginning to suspect is a Very MessyPersonal Life, Shelly is, surprisingly,verygood at PR. It was Shelly’s idea to create VIP areas at the parties for meetups and subgroups, and Shelly’s idea to have gift bags with curated accessories from the website featuring a variety of brands. It was also her idea to have a step and repeat at the last party, and to create a hashtag to go with it! The step and repeat was a giant hit.
Juliana gets to Joy Bombs first and scans it for a potential New York reporter and photographer. She sees a sandy family, two teenage girls in tiny shirts, one man in a gray T-shirt with a laptop and a worried expression. She chooses a table, considers, chooses a different table. She opens her laptop, closes it, scrolls through her emails on her phone.
And then. The door to Joy Bombs opens, and who walks in but Taylor and David. Juliana’s heart jackhammers. She’s most likely going to have a heart attack. She’s never met Taylor, but of course she knows what she looks like from years of online observing, from the wedding announcements, from frequent visits to the website of Buchanan Enterprises. She’s just as beautiful, just as elegant, just astallin person as she is in photos. She’s wearing a pink-and-white embroidered sundress that manages to be both fitted and full-skirted without looking frumpy, and contemporary while also looking timeless. Juliana is too short to pull off a dress of that length.
